2014 Exploring The Northwest – DAY 35 – Newport on the Oregon coast
Today’s highlight was the drive along the Oregon coast. It is spectacular with alternating cliffs and rocks, and mile long beaches. The state did an outstanding job of providing public access to the whole coast. There are so many scenic pullouts and short side trips that we finally had to stop taking them. We were running out of time to reach our next campsite.
Oregon coast
Oregon beach front
By lollygagging our way down the coast, we found our intended campsite at Depoe Bay full and had to move on to South Beach State Park just south of Newport. This park is not up to the quality that we experienced in northern Oregon. One of our assumptions on following the coast was that there was no need for campsite reservations. After all, the kids are back in school, everyone back at work, so there should be lots of empty campsites. Wrong! While we didn’t see a lot of children, there was what seemed like thousands of adults with leisure time. Learning: Make campsite reservations in advance.
Newport Harbor
Selling fresh caught Albacore Tuna
Once we set up camp, we explored the nearby town – Newport – which had not been on our radar scope. What a wonderful surprise. It is a charming town with a beautiful medium size harbor. The town seems healthy due to a commercial fishing fleet of about 150 boats. Seafood is available everywhere. One boat [see photo] had caught Albacore tuna, that are running now. They were selling the fish right off their boat. They would fillet the fish ready to eat or can. It was VERY tempting to buy, but we couldn’t figure out how Rosemarie and I could eat or freeze about 20 pounds of fish.
Oyster menu boar
Just bought 4 dozen fresh oysters
Shucking oysters – hard, never ending
Hmmm, delicious!
Never wanting for another ‘shinny’ object to pursue, we decided to find fresh oysters. About 5 miles down the river we found an oyster farm. We were so excited about this find that we lost all judgment and bought 4 dozen oysters and a shucking knife.
First of all, Roselie does not eat oysters. Second, Carmine will only eat a couple. That means two of us have to eat the rest – delicious, but lots of hard work and food. Watching the technique for shucking oysters on U-Tube does not make one proficient. We needed Brent for this job. We also tried cooking some over an open fire, using how-to instructions offered by one of the locals. That didn’t work very well – only a 20% success rate.
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